Introduction

As we go to press, the World Bank has just announced the cancellation of its Economic Development Conference scheduled for late June in Barcelona, Spain. This action was taken because its organisers feared another mass anti-capitalist demonstration made up of youth, trade unionists and environmental groups. This represents a major victory for the anti-capitalist movement and shows that the major capitalist institutions are....Under Siege!

The British newspaper, The Guardian, states that in Turkey ‘union leaders say that more than 500,000 people have lost their jobs this year, most of them since the current economic crisis in February’.

On the other hand, in neighbouring Greece ‘the biggest working-class mobilisation of the last decades has taken place. It shook every single town in Greece and not only Athens. It caused the complete paralysis of everything and everywhere. There have been many general strikes in Greece during the last decade. Certainly over 20 in all. But none of them compared to the last one of 26 April!’ (The socialist paper, Xekinima – Forward – produced by the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) in Greece).

These events, like the revolutionary upheavals in Ecuador in February 2000, and in Serbia in October, together with the worldwide anti-globalisation, anti-capitalist protests, are the reasons why the CWI manifesto, Under Siege! Global capitalism and the socialist alternative, has been produced at this time. They signify the opening of a new chapter of struggles of the working class and young people worldwide, which will be reinforced by the looming economic crisis.

The US economy has been the Atlas which has carried on its shoulders the whole of the world capitalist economy, particularly in the last decade. The dramatic slowdown in the US economy, particularly in the manufacturing sector – with nearly 166,000 jobs lost in April of this year – shows that the world stands on the eve of a serious capitalist crisis, the burden of which will be borne by working-class people.

However, they will not face the inevitable mass lay-offs and drastic cuts in living standards in silence. This has already been indicated by the mass uprising of workers and peasants in Ecuador which held real power in its hands, pushed the fake parliament of the landlords and capitalists aside for a time, and attempted to set up its own organs of rule. In Turkey, not just the working class but the middle class – shopkeepers and taxi drivers – have demonstrated and ‘rioted’, all have shown their ‘widespread disgust at the way politicians have reacted to the crisis’. One Istanbul shopkeeper declared: ‘We don’t trust any of them anymore.’

Events such as these, as well as the magnificent movements of the Greek workers, will be repeated in all countries of Europe in the next period. The already destitute working masses and poor peasants in Africa, Asia and Latin America, facing even greater impositions, will be compelled to move into action against rotting landlordism and capitalism. In North America events, as in Seattle in 1999 and Quebec this year, are beginning to stir the mighty US and Canadian working class.

There is no doubt that working-class people, under the hammer blows of this capitalist crisis, will be compelled to move into action. A significant layer of young people and workers are already rejecting what capitalism has meant for them and their families. Is there, however, a viable alternative to the ‘market’ and its supporters? Bulent Ecevit, the prime minister of Turkey, in the face of a mass uprising against all the existing main capitalist forces and their parties, thinks not. He has brazenly declared: ‘If they [the Turkish population] are shouting resign, they also have to provide an alternative. I’m not glued to my chair.’ (The Guardian, London, 12 April 2001)

In other words, there is no alternative, says Ecevit, to his brutal government and system. The CWI in this manifesto explains that there is. It combines a rigorous examination of the crisis of world capitalism, together with an explanation of the contradictions of this system. It also raises the vision of a new society, a socialist one, which is within the grasp of the working class and, indeed, of humankind as a whole, so long as we replace outworn and disintegrating capitalism with a new, world democratic socialist system. It also charts out the path towards this goal, a comprehensive fighting programme. The manifesto and the appended article, which deals with the present phase of the world anti-globalisation, anti-capitalist struggle, represents the summing up of the collective experience of the CWI and its membership, with affiliated organisations and a presence in 35 different countries worldwide.

We believe that this programme provides the basis for beginning to construct the forces that will provide a real alternative, a mass, socialist force of working-class people and the youth in all corners of the globe. This, in turn, can lay the foundations for a new mass working-class International which will be the instrument for ushering in a new socialist world.

Under Siege! Global capitalism and the socialist alternative

The struggle against global capitalism will shape and decide the future. Globalisation, according to its apologists, was supposed to bring prosperity and security to all. In reality, the opposite has taken place. The new Millennium was, according to UNICEF (an arm of the United Nations), preceded by a “decade of undeclared war on women, adolescents and children as poverty, conflict, chronic social instability and preventable diseases such as HIV/AIDS threaten human rights and sabotage their development”. The attacks on workers’ rights and the poor, following in the wake of globalisation, have created a world more divided and unjust than ever before. But workers and particularly young people are saying: “Enough is enough!”

The demonstrations against global capitalism that began in Seattle in December 1999, the revolts by workers and the poor in Ecuador and Serbia in 2000 and the mass demonstration against the European Union (EU) summit in Nice in December 2000, and the bringing down of the president in the Philippines in January 2001 - they all foreshadow the beginning of a global protest movement against corruption, injustice, and social and economic hardship.

More than one-fifth of the world’s population, 70 per cent of them women lives in absolute poverty, on one US dollar a day or less. Chronic mass unemployment is stalking the world. Nearly one-third of the world’s workforce is either unemployed or underemployed. An environmental meltdown is looming. The last 25 years has been the most destructive in the history of the natural world. The planet Earth is not dying; big business and politicians acting on behalf of capitalism are slowly killing it. The vicious circle of violence, poverty and environmental destruction that is integral to globalisation is the ultimate threat to future of humanity.

It is time to step up the fight against global capitalism and to raise the banner of struggle, solidarity and socialism. That is why the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) urges young people and workers to get active and get organised.

The CWI is a Marxist organisation. Marxism or revolutionary socialism is not a dogma but a guide to action. As Karl Marx wrote more than 150 years ago: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, the point however is to change it”.

The CWI brings together socialist activists throughout the world. We have parties, organisations and members in Africa, Asia, Australia, CIS (former USSR), Eastern and Western Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and North America.

Join the CWI! – “A true threat [arising] from globalisation”, according to the Australian Herald Sun (28 August 2000).

The dominant sectors of the economy - industry, finance, transport and services - need to be taken into public ownership under the democratic control and management of working people. On the basis of public ownership and genuine democracy a plan can be worked out that would serve the needs of society. A planned economy would make it possible to distribute wealth and resources on a national plane as well as globally.  On these new social and economic foundations we will secure the development of production and technology in harmony with nature and the environment - a shift to an environmentally sustainable economy.

Genuine socialism has nothing to do with the totalitarian one-party dictatorships and distortions of a planned economy that existed in the former USSR or Eastern Europe. In fact, the existence of these undemocratic and bureaucratic regimes (Stalinism) prevented a development towards socialism - a society that would lift humankind out of the realm of necessity and into the realm of freedom.

The gathering storm

Modern capitalism has been able to develop the productive forces (science, technology, machinery, the way production is organised, the skill of the workforce, etc.) - to an unprecedented level. Yet in the era of information technology (IT) and when plans are being made to conquer the planet Mars half of the people in the so-called ‘developing countries’ have never used a telephone.

The gap between the ‘haves and the have-nots’ has become wider and wider across the world. Forget the ‘trickle down theory’. The truth is that hardly anything filters down to the poorest sections of society. Indeed a large section of the population is left behind or is living on the margins.

There is a greater gap in income between the rich and the majority of the US population than at any time since such data has been collected. The wealth of the top 1 per cent of the US population (the 2.7 million richest) now, for the first time ever, exceeds that of the bottom 90 per cent. The top 1 per cent constitute a class of billionaires and millionaires who have done nothing to earn their wealth other than to sit on booming assets. This is at the same time as the income ratio between a factory worker and company bosses, already 1 to 42 in 1980, now stands at 1 to 425!  And the US magazine Business Week is asking: “Why are so many people so angry about globalisation?”!

Cuts in welfare and benefits mean that today’s generation of workers and young people are less protected than the generation before. Furthermore, hardly any job is regarded as secure. Women and young workers are often the first victim of what is called ‘atypical’ forms of working (part-time, short term contracts, sub-contracting).  

Job insecurity and stress related illness affects not only the working class but also the middle classes. This is one reason why the ‘feel-good factor’ has been replaced by widespread alienation, anxiety and uncertainty.

Greater social and political exclusion is bound to trigger off a revolt from below.

The case for socialism

The CWI stands for the complete socialist transformation of society.

No one can seriously argue that capitalism is a successful system, or that the real problem is lack of resources or that there are too many people to feed. Yet food production has more than kept apace with global population growth. “The world already produces sufficient food to feed its population – with an available food supply equivalent to 2,700 calories per person per day”, according to report issued by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN in October 2000. 

People go to bed hungry and wake up hungry not because there is a shortage of food but because food and the means to produce it are in the hands of the multinationals and the super rich. The hungry do not have enough money to buy the food produced and sold by the multinationals.

And yet, material prosperity has increased by more in the past 100 years than in all of the rest of human history. The world economy has increased by 17 times during the 20th century and the world’s population has increased four times. Income per person has climbed from US $1,500 to US $6,600, with most of this rise concentrated in the second half of the 20th century (1950-2000). This development alone should have been enough to ensure that every man, women and child on Earth had a chance to enjoy life to the fullest. There is no lack of resources, there is no lack of wealth, knowledge or technology. Ninety per cent of all scientists who have ever lived are alive today. The technological advances and, in there wake, the economic growth of the 20th century, have been spectacular and unprecedented.  Nevertheless, only a minority of the world’s population has received a piece of the expanding cake. The top 20% of the richest in the world consumed 86% of all goods and services produced - sixteen times more than the bottom fifth!

The money is there to transform the basic living standards of everyone. The assets of the 200 richest people are more than the combined income of the poorest 2.4 billion people in the world! According to the United Nations: “It is estimated that the additional cost of achieving and maintaining universal access to basic education for all, basic health care for all, reproductive health care for all women, adequate food for all and safe water and sanitation for all is roughly US $40 billion a year...This is less than 4 per cent of the combined wealth of the 225 richest people.” (UN Human Development Report, 1997).

A modest 0.5% on every international currency transaction (the Tobin Tax) would raise the staggering sum of US $720 billion dollars annually, which could be spent on social needs. This example shows that there are already the necessary resources and money available which could be used to wipe out poverty. But the proceeds of such a tax, which would strike at the heart of today’s vampire-like capitalism, could only be collected as part of a struggle to take control of the multinationals and the financial institutions on a global plane.

There has never been a greater need for international socialism. Without a socialist transformation of society the future of humankind is in danger. Capitalism is decaying and only offers further poverty, oppression and environmental disaster. Recent months have seen an upsurge in working class struggle. Uniting struggles like these and developing them into a broader movement with socialist ideas is a precondition for a revolutionary transformation of society. This will be determined by how conscious the working class is of its enormous potential strength and of what steps are necessary to end capitalist rule internationally.

The word ‘revolution’ has become somewhat fashionable nowadays. Even capitalist firms are using the term for marketing purposes. In their hands the word loses all real meaning. A revolutionary process, however, is first and foremost characterised by the direct participation of ordinary people in historic events. In ordinary times it looks like politicians, experts and other representatives of the elite make history. But as the capitalist order crumbles, ordinary people - workers, youth and the poor - enter the political scene to struggle for lasting changes to their living conditions and for a new society.

During the 20th century there were many heroic attempts by the working class and the poor to change society. Yet these movements did not succeed in bringing about socialism. The fundamental reason for this is that there was no organised mass socialist force, apart from Russia in October 1917, strong enough to provide a programme, strategy and leadership for the revolutionary struggle. A fighting party, truly democratic and based on active members, is needed to prepare and organise the struggle in order to guarantee a complete transformation of society. If it is to break the inevitable opposition put up by the capitalist class, the movement for socialism will have to gain strength through the active participation and support given by the majority of the population.

History is full of examples which illustrate that the capitalist class is prepared to use violence and dictatorial means in order to defend its profit, incomes and power. Nothing less than a determined and conscious movement of the oppressed, under the banner of socialism, can divide and neutralise the armed forces of the capitalist state and secure a peaceful transformation of society. A socialist breakthrough, the formation of a workers’ government will, of course, begin in one country. But the struggle of the oppressed, particularly in today’s ‘global village’, knows no borders. A socialist victory in one particular country will act as a beacon to the rest of the world. A workers’ government bringing into public ownership the dominant sectors of the economy, including multinationals operating in that country, taking control over finances and introducing state monopoly of trade, will immediately come into conflict with big business. The multinationals will try to organise ‘a global strike of capital’ aiming to overthrow a workers’ government. The only protection against attempts by global capitalism to sabotage and undermine every measure taken by a workers’ government is to try to spread the socialist revolution across the world. The way to ensure solidarity and international support will be to issue appeals to other workers to follow suit and step up the struggle for international socialism: aiming to form a voluntary and equal confederation of socialist states.

Are we ‘old fashioned’ to talk about mass action, and the role of the working class in the era of computers and the Internet? Do we still need to refer to the socialist organisation of society when we have ‘cyber democracy’ and we are just a ‘click’ away from being linked up with the entire planet?

Computers and the Internet are important means of communication, and for collecting and storing information. But society will not be changed by clicking a mouse or pressing a button. Virtual power can neither replace the active participation of workers and poor in struggle nor can a computer network act as a substitute for fighting democratic, socialist organisations. Modern technology, which is only available to a small portion of the world anyhow, can be used as an aid to mass struggle, not to supplant it. During mass movements in the Philippines at the beginning of 2001, protesters ingeniously utilised mobile phone text messages to help organise demonstrations. In other words, the new technology was used as an auxiliary to mass action.

The CWI fights for a socialist policy for full employment and social welfare. We fight for:

A living minimum wage.

A shorter working week without loss of pay and on conditions set by workers.

No to the bosses’ flexibility and annualisation of working hours.

A massive public spending increase for health, education, childcare and housing.

Stop privatisations and de-regulations. Renationalise the public utilities that have been privatised, compensation should only be given to the small shareholders on the basis of proven need.

No discrimination on the grounds of sex, race, religion and sexuality. Equal pay for equal work.

Free education at all levels and a free health service.

Non-payment of the national debt. No more hand outs to the speculators and parasitic moneylenders. Compensation to be paid on the basis of proven need.

Take into public ownership the dominant sectors of the economy under the democratic control and management of working class people.

A fighting alternative to global capitalism

What measures, what programme can prepare and mobilise the working class for the taking of power and establishing socialism?

The CWI puts forward a fighting programme that links together the day to day struggle for better conditions with socialism. As socialists we fight for every demand or change that could improve the living conditions of workers and youth. But our aim is not to ‘reform’ capitalism and its institutions, but to bring fundamental changes and end the rule of capitalism. Those who talk about ‘globalisation with a human face’ are trading in illusions.

Even a defensive struggle to save jobs and social welfare tends to develop into a struggle which questions and challenges the dominance of global capitalism. The struggle for better living and working conditions is bound up with the need to change society. This means that today’s struggle has to be linked with the overall task of fighting for socialism. 

If we restrict the struggle to what the bosses are prepared to accept or what is ‘realistic’ under capitalism we will end up with nothing or very little. What can be achieved or not will be decided by the capacity of workers and young people to struggle. The outcome of the struggle depends on many factors, not only the mood or the ‘fighting spirit’. If that was solely what was needed then capitalism would have been overthrown a long time ago. What in the end decides the outcome of the class struggle is to what extent a revolutionary socialist party has been able to gain firm support from working people, the quality of its leadership and what kind of programme, tactics and strategy it adopts.

The socialist programme is not just a list of demands; it is a generalisation of the historical lessons of the working class movement. It starts from what is needed in order to guarantee everybody a decent life, and then provides demands which form a bridge from workers’ present conditions and level of understanding to the conception of the socialist revolution.

The false dawn of the market

Since the mid-1970s world capitalism has moved into a period of organic (structural) crisis and stagnation. Capitalism in the last 25 years, despite cyclical fluctuations, is characterised by historical decline, social inequality, mass unemployment, slow growth, and financial and political fragility. By more ruthless exploitation and further integration (neo-liberalism and globalisation) the capitalist class thought that they had found a way out of this stagnation. But globalisation has aggravated all the contradictions inherent in capitalism, i.e. the collision between the forces of production and the relations of production (private ownership of the means of production, the nation state, the social, legal and political framework within which the system operates). It is this basic collision that leads to crisis, wars and revolutions.

Global capitalism can be described as a world casino economy. Speculation not production, is now the most profitable economic activity. Transactions in foreign exchange markets have now reached the astonishing sum of at least US $1.5 trillion a day - over 50 times the level of world trade in service and goods. That expresses the parasitic and destructive nature of modern capitalism.

The capitalists invest their money in order to make profits. As Sir Brian Moffat, the Chairman of Corus (a European steel company) said after axing 6,000 jobs at the beginning of 2001: “Corus does not make steel, it makes money”. In other words capitalism is a system based upon production for profit. But profit is unpaid labour. The working class receives only a portion of the value that they create, in the form of wages, and cannot buy back all the goods it produces. This basic contradiction could only temporarily be overcome, by ploughing back the surplus produced by the workers into new technology, machinery, buildings and research (often fuelled by credit). But soon the rising cost of investments will start to eat into their profits as the huge imbalance between supply and demand keeps growing. This is accompanied with a large build-up of debt and the capitalists cannot find enough buyers to buy all the goods. The result of this process is the creation of overcapacity and overproduction, or ‘a glut’ as the capitalists call it. Globalisation is breeding a classic crisis of capitalism which, of course, the capitalists themselves are not going to pay for.

The insane contradiction of the market means that ‘too much’ of everything seems to be produced at the same time as capitalism cannot even feed everyone, let alone provide a decent life for the majority.

‘Overproduction and overcapacity’ in relation to profit, not need, is an absurd phenomenon, which only occurs under capitalism. We have the grotesque spectacle of foodstuffs and goods being stockpiled sky-high, while millions face near starvation and lack the most basic of necessities.

Instead of a ‘New Economy’ global capitalism is once again moving into an ‘old’, classical  crisis of recessions and slumps. The hi-tech economy has gone from dot.com to dot.bomb. The present slowdown in the US points towards a worldwide recession with an explosive political and social fall out. US capitalism acted as the locomotive of world capitalism in the 1990s but it is now paying the ultimate price: a stock market bubble has started to burst, a record trade deficit and the economy is hardly growing. At the same time, the mountain of debt (corporate and households debt) points towards more bankruptcies, job losses and shrinking consumption. And when US capitalism goes down the rest of the world will follow. Moreover, it is quite possible that the US could become the new Japan of this decade, falling into a spiral of economic stagnation and political crisis.

The monopolies are in the driving seat

World capitalism is led by a few hundred giant multinationals, which are often wealthier than nations. Many sectors of the global economy are controlled by only a handful of multinational companies. Or, as Arnold Weinstock, chairman of what was then the manufacturing company GEC in Britain admitted in 1989: “There is no such thing as the free market”.

More than 50 of the world’s 100 leading economic entities are multinational companies. The multinational companies account for four-fifths of world industrial output and more than two-thirds of world trade. The combined sales of the top 200 corporations exceed the total income of all the countries in the world apart from the nine largest economies.

The multinationals have also become bigger and more powerful after the recent wave of cross-border mergers and acquisitions, i.e. one company absorbing another. This has meant that concentration of wealth and capital has reached an unprecedented level. The US car maker Ford, ranked as the fourth biggest company in the world, is still in the hands of one single family! 

One main aspect of globalisation is the deepening of the process of international economic integration. Today’s production is split up into a number of different stages and take place in different countries. This in turn has underlined the fact that the struggle to change society has to be armed with an international perspective, that workers and youth in struggle in any country have to try to win support from their brothers and sisters abroad.

The struggle needs to be globalised.  Globalisation has emphasised that the struggle for socialism is international or nothing. A socialist breakthrough in one country has to be followed by the overthrow of capitalism and landlordism worldwide. No country, left on its own, can for any length of time hold out against the brutal and destructive forces of global capitalism.

Turning the screw

International capitalist institutions like the EU, World Bank and the IMF have been instrumental in implementing the neo-liberal agenda in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and, in recent years, Eastern Europe and former Soviet Union. These organisations are nothing more than mercenaries of the main capitalist powers, especially US and European imperialism. Take the example of Ecuador. This country became bankrupt in 2000 mainly as a result of the policies dictated by the IMF. This meant further impoverishment for the mass of the population. It helped provoke an uprising in January 2000, which saw workers and youth overthrow the right-wing government. In the absence of a farsighted socialist leadership, the old forces of reaction were able to climb back to power. Yet the corrupt ruling class and imperialism can offer no way out. In November 2000,  the IMF once again seized Ecuador by the throat and ordered the government to raise the price of cooking gas by 80 per cent, eliminate 26,000 jobs and halve real wages for the remaining workforce. Moreover, the government was also compelled to transfer ownership of its biggest water system to foreign operators and grant the oil giant BP Arco the right to build and own its pipeline over the Andes mountains.

An endless list of countries have experienced the same economic coup d état. Nations have been forced to remove trade barriers, sell off assets and slash social spending. The IMF is in fact running at least 75 of the poorest developing countries at the moment. And this is called ‘democracy’!

On the basis of harsh experience, the working class and even middle classes have come to revile the term ‘neo-liberal’. Privatisation, in the popular consciousness, is synonymous with a more costly and worse service than before. People see that private companies are looting the state and making billions. The consequences are devastating lives.

De-regulation and privatisation were supposed to provide a more efficient service. But when private companies went in and took control of California’s electricity supply the lights soon went out. During 2001, California was periodically without electricity, in this the richest and most populous state of the wealthiest nation in the world! Suddenly, the Governor of California was urging the state to step in and place the energy sector back under state control! No power plants have been built in California for ten years. The private companies are only interested in making profits and sending high bills to households.

A growing environmental disaster

Inevitably, the protests against global capitalism and its institutions involve many environmentalists. This takes place at the same time as the parties in Western Europe are becoming less green (including supposedly Green parties).

An ecological disaster looms as climate changes, air and water pollution, land degradation, forest destruction, extinction of species and overexploitation of fish stocks continue. Nature has no reset button. Capitalism is not capable of providing anything like an environmentally sustained society that meets people’s needs, given the fact that this system is based on ruthless exploitation and the insatiable destruction of human and natural resources. No global task could be more pressing than to transform the current wasteful, polluting and chaotic methods of production into ecologically responsible, sustainable production.

Deforestation, which leads to the spreading of deserts and climate changes, has led to an increased frequency and severity of natural disasters. Furthermore, poverty and the state of the environment are inextricably linked. An estimated 1.4 billion people live without clean drinking water and a further 2.3 billion lack adequate sanitation. More than 8 million people die each year because of polluted water and dirty air.

The wellbeing of the natural world declines as profits for big business go up. Yet there is no possibility that the institutions of capitalism will be able to save the situation. Whenever there has been a clash between Green and trade issues, capitalist institutions like the WTO have never decided in favour of the environment.

The last 25 years, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), has been the most destructive in the history of the natural world since the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Record setting temperatures in the 1990s were part of a 20th century warming trend and temperature rises in this new century are projected to rise even faster. This global warming is already melting glaciers from the Peruvian Andes to the Swiss Alps. Reports published in 2000 warned that various islands, countries such as Bangladesh and Egypt, and large coastal areas could all disappear beneath the waves as the polar ice caps melt.

Despite many conferences and warnings issued by scientists, little has been done to reduce the release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases causing global warming. An influential section of the US ruling class, backed by the automobile and oil industries, dismisses global warming as a ‘myth’. In George W. Bush they got their man for US president. The first thing he did after being sworn into office was to open the wilds of Alaska to the big oil interests. The second thing was to declare that the US administration couldn’t care less about even the token promises made to slow down global warming at the World Environmental Summit in Kyoto in 1997 (the US is the biggest carbon dioxide polluter in the world).

Fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal) are immensely polluting. They create acid rain and they are the principal cause of global warming. Yet, most research goes on fossil fuels and nuclear power, largely ignoring renewable energy and efficiency. Fossil fuel and nuclear power with its lethal waste cause irreversible damage to the environment.

Capitalist politicians and big business spend enormous amounts of money on motorways and privatising the public transport system. This is despite the fact that road traffic is one of the largest producers of atmospheric pollution (as well as a mass killer).

The CWI campaigns for:

A socialist alternative plan for production of energy, worked out by representatives from workers in the energy sector, scientists, community and environmental organisations, replacing fossil fuels and nuclear power with massive investment into renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and geothermal heat (extracting heat from hot rocks). An integrated energy programme, with a democratic socialist plan of production, would guarantee cheap and safe energy for all the most harmonious development in the long and short term, of the different energy sources, for the benefit of society as a whole.

A planned transport policy that meets the needs of society and is environmentally sound. Privatised transport must be returned to public ownership and democratically controlled with the aim of creating an integrated, cheap public transport system assessible to all.

HIV/AIDS

The pharmaceutical companies charge stratospheric prices (monopoly prices) for their products and there is absolutely no link between the cost of a medicine and the cost of producing them (including the cost of research and development - R&D). The pharmaceutical giants, however, spend more on marketing than research.

At the same time, the pharmaceutical giants located in Europe and the US are trying to stop other countries from producing life-saving drugs at much lower prices. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is, of course, on the side of the monopolies’ global struggle to establish what is cynically called ‘intellectual property rights’. The big drug companies will take any measures to protect their profits and drug patents. The drug companies heavily depend on the support provided by the public sector (education, R&D and subsidies) and yet take home all the gains.

Millions are dying of AIDS and other diseases for the want of drugs that cost pennies to make. Every minute, on a world scale, 11 more people are infected with HIV. At the beginning of the year 2000, 34.3 million people were infected with HIV/AIDS, 24.5 million in Sub-Saharan Africa alone. Nineteen million people have died so far. This is a human disaster of monumental proportions, similar to the Black Death that wiped out huge sections of the population in Europe during the Middle Ages.

South Africa has been hit particularly hard.  It is estimated that 4.7  million people are infected with HIV - the largest number of any country in the world. But while leading members of the ANC are receiving expensive, Western cocktails of anti-virus drugs, millions are left to die. The ANC elite is rich enough to use a private medical scheme, while others in need are cynically told by the ANC leader Mbeki that HIV is not the cause of AIDS!

The pharmaceutical giants’ decision to withdraw their law suits against South Africa importing cheaper generic Aids drugs was a victory. This would not have happened without the courageous campaign by grass-roots activists in South Africa and other countries who forced the drug giants to retreat or face an international outcry and action against them. It also shows that it is possible to fight and score at least partial victories against the multinationals.

The drug companies’ announcement that they would reduce the price in poorer countries of some of their anti-AIDS drugs is not because they have begun to feel sympathy for the poor and those  who are HIV positive. It is motivated purely by a desire to defend their own interests and to block countries from following the path of, for example, Brazil. Brazil used a loophole in the WTO rules that gives permission to make a generic medicine “in a national emergency”, a  loophole the big drug companies are now trying to close. Brazil started to produce and distribute its own anti-AIDS drugs at a price 75 per cent less than that charged in the US and Europe. Thanks to this, the number of AIDS-related deaths plummeted by nearly 40 per cent between 1995 and 2000 in that country. This is an indication of what can be achieved if the necessary drugs are made more affordable, even on the basis of capitalism.

The campaign to combat HIV/AIDS must be linked to the struggle to wipe out poverty and inequality and for a hugely increased expenditure on healthcare and education.

The CWI campaigns for:

Free healthcare for all, including HIV-tests and treatment

Equal opportunities and no discrimination against people who are HIV positive

Comprehensive sex education and free condoms

These demands needs to be linked to education about HIV/AIDS and for massive research to find a vaccine able to prevent infection. The wealth and the resources of the most industrialised countries could transform the situation in the poorest areas of the world. But in order to achieve that the working class and the poor across the globe needs to fight to break the grip of the pharmaceutical companies and Western imperialism.

Food for profit

Food is produced for profit not to ensure that people are well fed and healthy. Profit hungry companies and intensive farming are putting life at risk. The BSE (or ‘mad cow disease’) scandal, that started in Britain, shows the lunacy of the profit system and the fact that governments are more concerned about the well-being of the meat industry than people’s health. The dash for profit, combined with deregulation, caused BSE amongst cattle. Contaminated beef then entered the food chain and BSE was transmitted into humans, causing vCJD (new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease).

Until 1996, the British government and the food giants claimed: “There is no risk associated with eating British beef”. This was despite several warnings by scientists and despite the fact that BSE was first discovered in 1985. But contaminated meat continued to enter the food chain in the 1990s and potentially BSE-infected feed was still exported. The official figure given in 2000 was that 80 people have died of vCJD in Britain. Yet no one has been held responsible.

Genetically modified (GM) food - ‘Frankenstein food’ - has not been put on sale in order to improve food quality or to feed the world, as claimed, but simply to boost profits. The transfer of genetic engineering from laboratories to nature, under the direction of the rapacious multinationals, could have a devastating effect on the ecosystem.

The CWI campaigns for:

Agribusiness, including the pharmaceutical companies, must be taken into public ownership. The food processing and retail industry should be brought under democratic workers’ control to ensure standards are set and controlled by consumers, farm workers and small farmers, not big business.

Rotten from top to bottom

The parasitic nature of capitalism has given rise to increasing corruption and fraud. This is also reflected in the political and legal structure of capitalism. Golden circles of politicians and businessmen have stolen millions and sometimes billions from the state coffers. 

Given the levels of corruption amongst the political elite, and the fact that there is hardly a cigarette paper’s width of difference between the mainstream parties, it is little wonder voters are increasingly abstaining in elections. The present disgust and contempt that exists could rapidly turn into mass anger and a willingness to take to the streets. Every revolt from below will tend to bypass the established parties and increase the gap between working people and the representatives of today’s capitalist political elite. 

In most cases, there are now no political parties in elections that genuinely represent the interests of working people. However, working class representation is developing in a number of countries and the CWI is leading the way. CWI candidates pledge only to take an average workers’ wage if they win a seat. Our members of parliaments or councils live under the same conditions as their voters and refuse to accept any privileges. For example, even the capitalist press has to admit that the CWI member of the Irish parliament, Joe Higgins, is “the red that money can’t buy”.

We take part, under our own name or together with other groups on the left, in elections in order to put forward a fighting, socialist alternative to the capitalist parties. Elections are not the main arena of the struggle, but it would be totally wrong for socialists to turn their back on elections and ignore the chance to spread the ideas of socialism to a broader audience.

What the capitalist establishment calls ‘liberal democracy’ is very much the dictatorship of the market. It is the capitalist class, despite what parties the electorate voted for, that dictates the essence of government policy.

For socialists, real democracy means struggling for a society where the majority - the working people - control and run society. The capitalist class and their representatives have a much more limited idea of democracy. Even the most ‘democratic’ government in the capitalist world is prepared to use the police and military against workers and youth that take to the streets or want to make their voice heard. Whatever is said about promoting democracy across the world, the capitalist class and imperialism have no problem in supporting dictatorships or implementing laws and regulations that restrict the democratic and national rights of working people.

The CWI defends every democratic right won by the struggle of the working class over decades. We are totally opposed to every measure taken by the capitalist state to suppress or restrict democratic, national, cultural or trade union rights.

We defend and support the right of oppressed nationalities to self-determination, up to and including the right to form their own independent state. We fight all forms of discrimination in the use of language. The cultural and educational rights of all ethnic and religious groups have to be fully respected.

The struggle to defend and extend democratic rights has to become part of a struggle against the dictatorship of the market and the rich. These forces have the politicians and the media in their pockets. The logical extension of the struggle for democracy is the establishment of socialist democracy in the economy itself.

Stamp out racism

The parties of the extreme right and nationalist, populist movements are trying to capitalise on the crisis of the established parties in the West and the widespread discontent that exists. The menace of the far right and fascist groups has to be met by a united working class and socialist alternative

Even if society, particularly under the blows of recession and slump, tends to move to the left there will also be periods when the forces of reaction will make gains. One of the consequences of capitalist decay and crisis is a social and political polarisation.  The rise of the right-wing populist movement in Austria, led by Jörg Haider, of the extreme right in France, Belgium, Denmark and parts of Germany, should act as a warning. These parties or ‘movements’ represent a ‘mild’ reaction today, although their pernicious ideas put ethnic and racial minorities at risk. They are extremely unstable parties, with a relatively small membership. But much more brutal and openly racist and reactionary forces could develop out of these parties and movements. Not only the traditional right-wing parties but also the former workers’ parties are flirting with nationalism and playing the racist card, which in turn boosts the extreme right. Social democratic governments in Europe have introduced a raft of laws to “tackle the flood” of immigrants and asylum seekers. Careerist trade union leaders are no better; they are incapable of mobilising the organised workers movement to stop the racist and extreme right wing parties. The anti-working class policies of conservative and social democratic governments have allowed the extreme right to gain a certain audience with their poisonous demagogy. The racists blame minorities for unemployment, social cuts and job losses. That is why the struggle against racism is bound together with the struggle for jobs, social welfare, decent housing, free education and for a living pension for all pensioners. Unless a credible socialist alternative is built sections of the working class and middle classes are in danger of falling under the spell of racist and far right ideas.

Nevertheless, the coming to power of the extreme right in any country can provoke an outbreak of struggle and mass protests. This was shown in Austria at the beginning of 2000, when school students went on strike and 300,000 people took to the streets in a massive demonstration against the new coalition between Haider’s party and the Conservatives.

The EU is building a ‘Fortress Europe’ against refugees and asylum seekers. The bosses and their governments are deliberately using racism in order to try and divide the working class.

Only a united, working class movement can prevent right-wing nationalist parties hjacking popular anger against global capitalism.  Only a mass socialist movement can cut across national and ethnic divisions amongst the masses and prevent society entering a vicious cycle of violence, civil wars and chaos. 

Racism must be stamped out wherever it raises its ugly head; this can only be done by mass action and a united struggle to defend social services and jobs.

The CWI fights for:

Workers’ unity – against racism

Defend the right of Asylum

No job closures or cuts in the welfare state

For a living minimum wage, full employment and affordable housing for all

The CWI fights for:

No restrictions of trade union rights. Scrap all the anti-trade union laws. Full freedom for workers to organise and take whatever collective action they regard as necessary on a national as well as international level.

For a democratic and fighting trade union movement, that acts and speaks as an independent force for the working class. Full-time officials should be regularly elected and receive the wage of an average worker.

International actions and campaigns (including strikes, worldwide days of actions, blockades and boycotts) need to be organised against the bosses’ onslaught on welfare and jobs, and in defence of workers’ rights and the environment. Trade union struggles must be combined with the idea of changing the world, of eliminating the power of the big monopolies that hold the majority of humankind by the throat.

Abolish big business secrets. Open the books of big business. Let the workers know where all the massive profits, tax rebates and subsidies have gone. No transfers of jobs or production without the agreement of workers.

All factories under threat of closure or partial closure to be taken into public ownership, under the democratic control of workers. Confiscate the assets of companies that threaten the jobs and conditions of workers and jeopardise the future of the community, or which have a record of environmental pollution.

Under the yoke of imperialism

By the beginning of the 20th century Africa and Asia and a large part of Latin America were already reduced to providing raw materials and cheap labour on the world market. The profits made in the colonies went to the dominant imperialist countries. Colonialism was the greatest robbery and land grab in history.

In the decades following 1945, the imperialist powers were forced to relinquish direct military domination in the colonial world. This was because, on the one hand, the cost of direct rule had become too expensive, and on the other hand, the movements for national and social liberation had reached unstoppable proportions.

Independence did not solve the problems facing the masses in what are now called ‘the developing countries’. The super-exploitation of the poor continued after imperialism was forced to give up its colonies. Through their control of the means of production and the world market, the imperialist monopolies have combined to impose a collective exploitation of the poorer countries. The old colonial system has been replaced by neo-colonialism, based on the dominance of the multinationals and imperialism. And the screw has been tightened over the last 20 years. In 1980 the average westerner was 15 times richer than the average African. Twenty years later the ratio had climbed to a staggering 50 to one!

The poorer countries are doomed to be robbed by the economic and political rules set by the imperialist powers. The very fact that natural resources, production and trade are in the hands of the multinationals has made it impossible for the ‘developing countries’ to develop and catch up to the West.  Unequal terms of trade, dictated by the imperialist countries, means that exports (mainly raw materials) from the poorer countries are cheaper compared to manufactured goods and technology these countries have to import from West. It does not matter if the poor increase their volume of exports, they will end up with lower incomes anyway thanks to a fall in the value of their exports.  Adding more salt to the wounds, the richer capitalist countries’ tariffs against imports from poorer countries are much higher than on those against goods from other richer countries, which means that the poorest countries are losing up to US $700 billion in export earnings each year.

There is no such thing as ‘fair trade’ under capitalism. The multinationals have gained a stranglehold over the supply chains - just four companies in each industry control 90 per cent of the exports of corn, wheat, coffee, tea and pineapples. Inevitably, the poorest are marginalised on the world market, and increasingly also in their domestic markets, as long as the multinationals are in the driving seat.

The resulting intensification of neo-liberal policies has led to an unbearable situation facing the masses. The wealth ratio between the richest and the poorest countries in the world was about 3 to 1 in 1820 and 74 to 1 in 1997.

The solution to the land problem and the future of the rural population  is bound together with the struggle to overthrow capitalism and establish a government of workers and poor - a socialist government. Such a government would immediately expropriate the land owned by the big capitalist landowners (agribusiness) and redistribute land to the small farmers and the landless. The state would then provide cheap loans to the farmers, public funds for sustainable food production, and inducements to form co-operatives and collective farming.

The CWI gives full support to the struggle for “land to the tillers” conducted by the rural poor. In Brazil, hundreds of thousands of landless peasants have taken upon themselves the task of carrying out long overdue land reform. The 20 biggest landowners in Brazil own more land than the 3.3 million smallest farmers.

The struggle for fundamental change in Asia, Africa and Latin America today has to be linked to the struggle of the working class in the advanced capitalist world. The historic delay of the socialist revolution in the West has turned life into a nightmare without end for the poorer masses in the neo-colonial world.

Non-payment of the debts

The burden of debts that have been forced on the poorest countries - by the so-called ‘civilised’ and ‘enlightened’ big powers - are killing thirteen children every minute in Africa alone. In 1999, Sub Saharan Africa - the world’s poorest region - paid out US $42 million a day to service their debts.

In Africa, where only one child in two goes to school, governments transfer to creditors in the industrialised world more than four times in debt repayment than they spend on health and education.

This obscene state of affairs has caused an outcry amongst workers and young people internationally, and forced the imperialist powers onto the defensive. However, the debt relief agreed by the richer countries will not change much. Western imperialism is fully aware of the fact that the poorest countries will never be able to pay off the total debt owed (US $2.5 trillion in 1999). The US had already started to write off some of the debts when the leaders of the richer countries were obliged to pretend to sit up and respond to the plight of the poor. But, of course, this so-called debt relief is on the conditions set by the major imperialist countries and their institutions, like the IMF. In other words, left to the representatives of imperialism, it could become an instrument for increased exploitation, as shown by the examples of Tanzania or Zambia.

Tanzania, a country where four in ten people die before they reach 35, was ordered by the IMF to start to charge for hospital visits and to implement school fees, to the great fanfare of ‘debt relief’. Zambia was forced to privatise its copper mines leading to the loss of 50,000 jobs in order to receive the same ‘debt relief’. The debt and ‘debt relief’ are used by the main imperialist powers as weapons to speed up privatisation and deregulation. After writing off some debts, everything is the same or even worse.

The CWI fights for:

Non-payment of the foreign debt

Nationalisation of the banks and the financial institutions under workers’ control.

Kick out the IMF/World Bank and their local agents.

Confiscation, without compensation of, all the wealth acquired through corruption by the ruling elites.

Walking a tightrope

The fate of the planet’s future cannot be left in the hands of the capitalist politicians, generals or diplomats. International organisations, such as the United Nations, are and will always be controlled by the major imperialist powers. The politicians talk about ‘peace’, ‘collective security’, ‘military interventions in the interests of humanity’ at the same time as they spend billions of dollars each day on arms, sell arms to whoever is prepared to pay, and wage a constant war on the working class and the poor. War is a continuation of politics by other means.

The world’s arsenal of nuclear arms is a threat to the very survival of humanity. Only in the fantasy world of the ultra-right can a nuclear war be ‘won’. For decades, the horrifying results of a nuclear war have prevented the use of such weapons. It is not in the interests of the ruling class to annihilate the goose that lays the golden egg - the working class. But this does not exhaust the question. In the longer term, if the working class fails again and again to take power into its own hands and suffers a series of crushing defeats, then the coming to power of the ‘Iron

Heel’, of brutal, unstable dictatorships, in the US, Europe and other industrialised countries, could become a reality. The ruling class would find it very difficult to keep such frenzied nuclear-armed regimes under control. This could open up the possibility that in order to ‘escape’ social and economic crises one of these monstrous regimes would be tempted to initiate a ‘first strike’ against another competing power, and to ‘win’ a nuclear war.

The arms industry must be brought into public ownership in order to work out plans for alternative production and to make sure that the resources spent on military research and arms are used for the benefit of humankind. President Bush has made it clear that he is prepared to pour billions of US dollars into the ‘Son of Star Wars’ project  (a variant of the former US president Ronald Reagan’s so-called vision of a space-based missile shield). It is estimated this ‘National Missile Defence system’ (NMD) will cost US $60 billion to US $100 billion or more. Even the retiring British Chief of Defence Staff was moved to call it “bloody expensive and extremely difficult to use” and he warned of a  “doomsday scenario”. The idea behind the NMD is that it is going to protect the US against a nuclear attack, not from a collapsing North Korea or a group of ‘terrorists’ (this ‘threat’ is created for propaganda purposes only), but from other military competitors, Russia and China in particular. Whoever achieves dominance in outer space will control the planet, according to the reactionary hawks in the Pentagon. A new militarisation thousands of kilometres above the planet will inevitably follow in the wake of the NMD, causing further instability and insecurity in the new world disorder created in the 1990s.

The CWI fights for:

An immediate and drastic cut in military spending. A worldwide campaign against chemical and biological weapons - for international nuclear disarmament.

Complete abolition of secret diplomacy and the treaties signed by the imperialist plunderers.

Total opposition to NATO and no to a Euro-army.

Democratic and trade union rights for soldiers and conscripts. Election of officers.

We recognise, however, that the power will have to be taken out of the hands of the ruling classes to achieve permanent disarmament. The struggle for world socialism is a struggle for lasting peace.

New mass parties of workers and young people

“No one speaks and acts for us”, is probably one of the most common statements heard today in working class areas. In most cases, working class people and youth are deprived of a political voice.

The complete capitalist transformation of former workers’ parties in the 1990s has posed the task of laying the basis for the formation of new mass democratic socialist parties of the working class and young people. The old parties, like the social democrats in western Europe, went from parties regarded as defending the interest of the working class but ruled by a capitalist leadership, to parties openly embracing global capitalism and the neo-liberal agenda.

At the same time, the CWI is working to win members to our own parties and groups, and to win support for the ideas, programme and method of revolutionary socialism (Marxism). There is no contradiction between those two tasks. In fact, they go hand in hand. Broad mass parties of the working class can only successfully overthrow capitalism if they are imbued with the ideas and programme of Marxism. The CWI is trying wherever possible to advance that process. In elections we want to work with other parties or independent candidates on the left, including standing on a common list or platform where there is agreement. In the trade unions we are working to build up a left opposition that stands for an independent, democratic and fighting trade union movement representing the members.

By means of mass struggle, and under the hammer blow of big events, the working class will see the need to set up their own political party. This will mark a huge step forward and drastically change the political situation in society.  However, as the history of the workers’ movement has illustrated, only on the basis of a clear socialist programme and the method of class struggle would it be possible to maintain the political independence of the workers’ movement and to close the door to careerism and opportunism.

The CWI fights for new mass socialist parties of the working class. We call for a new mass international - a world party of socialism.

The class struggle in the 21st  century

The movement of the oppressed faces formidable forces ranged against it. The capitalist class has developed a sophisticated system of upholding its power by using the carrot and the stick - divide and rule amongst the wage earners. The state and its armed forces, media and the education system are in the hands of the capitalist class and are used as a means of upholding the economic, ideological and political dominance of the ruling class and to maintain the present capitalist order.

The working class forms the absolute majority of the population. A growing number of people in the world - directly or indirectly - depend on the sale of their labour power. The World Bank in 1995 put the number at 2.5 billion. It estimated that the global working class has doubled in numbers since 1975. So much for all the nonsense that the working class no longer exists, and that the class struggle is a thing of the past! At the same time the capitalist class, the class that owns the means of production and the wealth produced by workers, make up a tiny, but powerful minority in society. “The entire U.S. ruling class could easily be seated in Yankee Stadium which holds 57,000 people”, wrote Michael Zweig in his book The Working Class Majority. That is out of a total population of more than 270 million! The same author, using a narrow definition, estimated that the “great majority form the working class...they account for over 60 per cent of the labour force”. 

Industrial workers, workers in the retail and service sectors, and public sector workers are all part of the working class. Significant changes in the geographic and gender composition of the international working class has given new strength and potential power to workers. More women than ever are in work, probably one of the most important social changes over the last decades. But still women are carrying a double burden, because of the class and gender oppression that exists under capitalism.

The new more brutal regime established at workplaces has also meant that the middle class is facing the same problems - longer working hours, shorter working lives, burden of debts, job insecurity and stress related illness - as the working class. Important sections of the middle layers and professionals have become increasingly close to the working class and are prepared to join ranks with workers in struggle. This was shown in the strikes and protest that took place in France in 1995 or in the one-day general strike that brought Greece to a standstill in April 2001. Furthermore, the urban working class in Africa, Asia and Latin America have a close ally in the rural poor, the landless and the poor peasantry.

Monopolisation and the development of a more advanced and global method of production has in fact increased the specific weight and role of the working class under capitalism. As capitalism has developed, it has turned more and more of the population into wage earners. 

A small group of workers can bring a country’s economy to a halt. In 1997, for example, a strike by French lorry drivers brought not only France to a standstill but a large part of Europe as well. A group of protesters effectively cut off oil and petrol supplies in Britain during September 2000.

It is precisely its specific role in production and distribution that gives the working class its collective power and consciousness.  It is its collective consciousness and capacity as a class that allows the working class to play the leading role in the revolutionary process and lays the basis for socialism. That is also the case in the poorer countries where the working class accounts for a smaller proportion of the population than in the West. Its role is decisive in the struggle against imperialism, capitalism and landlordism. Guerrilla struggle in the countryside can assist the struggle of the workers in the cities. But without the working class consciously at the head of a revolutionary movement, it will not be possible to establish a new regime based on workers’ democracy (a democratic socialist regime), which is able to begin the task of constructing socialism.

The ending of Milosevic’s regime in Yugoslavia in 2000 was a graphic illustration of the decisive role of the working class in a revolution. It was the strike action by Serbian workers that broke the resolve of police ranks. With the police going over to the workers and youth, Milosevic’s days were numbered. The working masses in Serbia needed only one week to remove the old regime, a task NATO was unable to accomplish despite unleashing its full military power during the eleven-week war in 1999.

In order to uphold their power the capitalists use the tactic of  ‘divide and rule’. This is the main instrument used by the bosses to create divisions amongst the workers and to reinforce every backward prejudice in relation to women, immigrants, refugees, gays and lesbians. However, in order to struggle successfully the workers have to rise above divisions of nationality, gender and religion - unity is strength. That is why the organised movement of the working class holds the key to overcoming all divisions and prejudices that exist under capitalism.

Holding the future

The struggle of the oppressed is first and foremost a struggle of the youth and working class women. It is often the struggle of the young people that inspires the older generation to take to the streets. Young people have always played a key role in the socialist movement.

Most members of the CWI, at this stage, are young workers, school students or students. The struggle of young people, however, has to be linked with the organised struggle of the working class. In bringing workers and young people together a mighty force is created, strong enough to end capitalist rule. An example of this was given in the demonstrations held against global capitalism in Melbourne in September 2000. Our organisation in Australia (the Socialist Party) was instrumental in linking up the trade unions, particularly the building workers, with the anti-capitalist youth making Melbourne and the S11 protest into another milestone in the global struggle against capitalism.

The decay of capitalism has meant that the young generation of today is going to be worse off than their parents, for the first time since 1930s. And the capitalists call this ‘progress’! Unemployment is higher amongst young people than other sections of the population. Young women face higher unemployment than young men. At the same time governments are spending less resources on education and introducing school or student fees.

The capitalists and their governments have nothing to offer young people in general and working class youth in particular. This system is rotten from top to bottom and has to be overthrown and replaced by a democratic socialist society.

Half of the world’s population is female. Two-thirds of all the world’s work is done by women and yet they receive just one-tenth of the world’s income.

Working class women still face double oppression - the double burden of being exploited as workers and as women. Worldwide, women still earn an average of 75 per cent of men’s pay, and still bear the main responsibility for childcare and household tasks regardless of the number of hours they work.

Many women experience violence and abuse in or outside the family. The so-called beauty industry, advertisements, magazines, movies, etc, portray a degrading and sexist picture of women. The porn industry, a symbol of the sickness of capitalism, is making billions of dollars from the global sex trade and prostitution.

Neo-liberalism represents an all-out attack on the rights and position of working class women and in its wake has followed an ideological/religious attack on women’s rights, particularly against single parents.

All the parties and organisations of the CWI have themselves pioneered campaigns on issues that directly affect women. Members of the CWI have initiated national campaigns against the low pay scandal, cuts in public spending, domestic violence and sexism.

As socialists we do not see equality as the right of women to share in the oppression of working-class men under capitalism. The struggle for equality and even more, the true liberation of women and men must involve the struggle to end exploitation based on class. The struggle for gender equality and the struggle for socialism are bound together. A united movement of the working class and of many middle-class women and men will change attitudes and gender relations.

The abolition of class society and the building of a new socialist society based on democratic involvement and co-operation would change social relations in society away from one based on hierarchy and abuse of one group by another. This will also be reflected in attitudes, culture and ideology.

How will socialism work?

What will things be like after a socialist revolution? Karl Marx was the first to say it is not possible to give a blueprint of the future society in advance. A socialist society will be under the conscious control of the working class, the majority of society, who will determine how society is run. Under capitalism, parliamentary democracy is held up as the highest form of democratic rule. But this only allows people to vote every four or five years, while society is still ruled by an elite. The CWI defends all the democratic rights, including the right to vote. But that right is undermined by the very absence of a real alternative and the political influence of big business.

A workers’ state would be completely different. Democratic councils or committees of working people would operate on a local, regional and national level. All delegates to these councils would be elected and open to recall. Trade unions would be independent of state interference. The government and other state institutions would be under the control of these bodies. Different political parties would have full freedom to operate, provided they did not side with counter-revolution. The workers’ state would see the self-organisation and creativity of the working class flourish. The economy would be brought under state ownership and workers’ control, as the first step towards creating a society of superabundance.

The critics of socialism say economic planning cannot work (“look at the Soviet Union”) and that only the market can respond to people’s desires. The ‘impossibility’ of national and international planning is one of the oldest myths of capitalism. The truth is that nothing would be able to function without planning and aims. The multinationals cannot act globally without a plan. They use the new technology to “fine tune” supply with demand, i.e. to try to calculate exactly how much the market can absorb. In the hands of big business it is a kind of advanced guesswork, but it gives a glimpse of how new technology could be used as an instrument to plan the economy as a whole. The planning of the multinationals is restricted to one company or one sector of the economy and motivated by the interests of its big shareholders.  This is an attempt to overcome the anarchy of the market, which, of course, is doomed to end in failure, because capitalism operates under the blind chaotic forces of the market. Production for profit not need inevitably means that the expansion of the market and consumption always tends to fall behind production in capitalism, causing recessions and slumps.

Capitalism is also a hierarchic system and therefore a highly bureaucratic system. It is only interested in exploiting the knowledge and the experience of workers for short-term profit. There can be no co-operative plan between workers and bosses under capitalism, let alone any democracy. Why should workers be prepared to propose changes to make production and distribution more efficient, or less costly, when they run the risk of it being turned against them? Nevertheless, if a multinational company can draw up a plan in the interest of the big shareholders, why shouldn’t a workers’ government be able to work out a plan that serves the needs of working people?

The task of the socialist revolution is to introduce democratic planning in society as whole. What is needed is to separate the means of production from their present parasitic owners and to organise society in accordance with a democratic rational plan. Then it will be possible, in a relatively short period of time, to raise the standard of living of the world’s population. Through a planned use of resources, the wealth produced could be used to slash the working week to enable everyone to take part in the running of society. Nationalised industries in a workers’ state would not be like the old bureaucratic nationalised industries under capitalism. Workers’ control would see each workplace or factory run by elected councils that would be accountable to the entire workforce. Would workers still need to be managed by ‘experts’ and ‘specialists’? It is workers who have the best understanding of the process of production. Under capitalism, managers are there to maintain exploitation and for marketing purposes, etc. There would be no place for these roles under socialism. Of course, technical experts are required until there is a dramatic improvement in mass education. These ‘experts’ however would be under the direction and control of democratic bodies in the workplace.

With production directed towards the needs of people, and with a drastic cut in working hours, people can start to build a new society based on human solidarity. The enormous ability and potential knowledge of every human being would for the first time be used to the benefit of society. The same goes for research and science, which is at present restricted and wasted under the profit system and imprisoned by companies’ patents and ‘intellectual property rights’.

Workers’ control and ownership of industry is the basis for the introduction of a planned economy. There is a world of difference between socialist planning and the undemocratic, top-down and bureaucratic planning experienced under Stalinism in the ex-USSR and Eastern Europe. A plan of production needs democracy as the body needs oxygen. A democratic socialist  plan of society would be the result of discussions and decisions on how the national income should be divided up between investment, consumption, social services and the transfer of resources to the poorer countries of the world. People’s needs and priorities would be worked out. Democratic committees at every level of society would run and control the plan, and make every necessary change or correction.  New technology in the hands of working people will then be used as a means of shortening working hours and improving conditions at work. A shorter working week would not only means more jobs, but would give ordinary people for the first time an opportunity to combine work, social relations, and leisure with the task of running society. When the majority are actively involved in taking and executing decisions, there is no room for bureaucracy or privileged elites.

The establishment of a socialist planned economy would reduce many of the unnecessary costs of capitalist competition and the amount of waste it produces. Capitalism means the duplication of products, research and development. We are sold many manufactured goods (washing powder, televisions, cookers, cars etc), which are essentially the same. The amount spent on marketing in capitalism is estimated at US $1,000 billion a year! That sum alone could provide education, health care, clean water and sanitation for all.  The money wasted on the military, ten times more than all governments are spending in total on education, could be used to wipe out poverty and to fight infectious diseases.

A socialist economy established on an international scale would put an end to the cyclical crises of capitalism, which cause the destruction and waste of productive forces through underinvestment, overproduction and mass unemployment. A planned use of resources and knowledge would rapidly eliminate today’s grotesque inequalities between different continents and countries, and pave the way for a future in harmony with nature and the environment. To begin with, it would be possible to provide adequate food, clothing and shelter for everyone. Beyond this, society would move towards superabundance and free distribution according to need.

This in turn would make it possible to reach full equality between men and women. A workers’ state would immediately enact a number of legal and educational measures to combat women’s oppression, including measures to combat violence against women. Women would receive equal pay and abortion on demand. However, in order to change the fundamental roots of women’s oppression it would be necessary to tackle the position of women in the family, which is a product of class society. Under capitalism, the burden of housework and child rearing falls on women. This provides the bosses with a supply of new productive labour at no cost. It also serves to divide the working class. Under socialism housework and childcare would be socialised in a caring and efficient manner.

A  workers’ government would introduce far-reaching legislation to safeguard gay and lesbian rights and introduce programmes to wipe out prejudices. The ending of the class based and oppressive capitalist family unit will see real equality and liberation for women, as well as gay and lesbian people.

Wars and violence would become a thing of the past under socialism as people by themselves and for themselves take part in the building of a new society. With the removal of the market economy and capitalist competition, and the introduction of global socialist co-operation that transforms the lives of all, why would one country want to wage war against another? Similarly, the last vestiges of racism and ethnic and national divisions would disappear under a socialist society. That is not to say racism, no more than sexism, would just vanish overnight. Their roots are deep and would last for a period beyond the end of capitalism. However, the working class will only come to power on the basis of a high degree of unity between people of all ethnic backgrounds. This struggle will overcome many prejudices. A socialist society will be based upon collective ownership and control of the productive forces, which unites workers rather than divide them. Unemployment, homelessness and poverty - often the breeding ground for racist ideas - would be eradicated.

To begin with, a socialist society will have to use the resources it inherits from capitalism. This will mean that the supply of goods will be limited and workers will have to work for wages, which they use to buy goods. Socialism will increase production to a point where supply exceeds demand. It will then not be necessary to sell goods and they can be distributed according to need. Free distribution will progressively cover everything, including housing, water, health, education, transport, food and entertainment.

But socialism is not only about distributing wealth and using the present resources in the interests of working people and according to a democratic plan. It is also about generating new wealth. The aim of world socialism is to provide everyone on the planet with all the necessities of life. Then people could really begin to enjoy life through stimulating work, culture, developing personal and social relations.  For the first time in the history of humankind a future would be built without fear, violence and oppression.

For the great majority of people, work under capitalism is exhausting, boring and undignified. The introduction of new technology has not transformed this situation but, if anything, has increased rates of exploitation and the tyrannical regimes in the workplaces. Under socialism, work would be transformed into something rewarding, safe and useful. The working week would be slashed. The introduction of new technology in a planned economy would allow a greater sharing of work. Furthermore, technology and automation would continually reduce the amount of physical labour required and eliminate the most menial tasks. These changes will also help progressively overcome the division of labour (mental and manual, and the increasing compartmentalisation of work). Everyone will be able to become a planner and a producer and to have the time, energy and education to be fully involved in the running of society.

As society moves towards the ‘higher stage of socialism’ the state will wither away and there will be no need for money, or any other remnants of the old order that may exist in a transitional period between capitalism and socialism. In these conditions the state will have lost its coercive functions: there will be no oppressed class to hold down, no oppressor class to defend.

The promise of socialism has moved many millions in the past, and it will do so again. Working people - the young, women, the poor and oppressed - have no choice but to enter the road of struggle. But if society is to be fundamentally changed the struggle needs to adopt revolutionary Marxist ideas and methods. This includes making the fight for socialism international. The world is now more integrated than at any time before in history. In settling scores with its own national capitalist class, the working class will inevitably take on the multinationals and interests of the ruling class around the world. Already the international character of the anti-globalisation movement illustrates that many of the new generation of young activists have concluded that the fight to change the world has to be international. This is a tremendous step forward, even if at this stage only a minority of them are consciously socialists at this stage.

The resources for ending poverty, inequality and social deprivation exist on an international plane, not in one country alone. A socialist victory in one country has to be spread to other countries; otherwise it would not be possible to move towards socialism. There is no possibility of a single country building a socialist island in a sea of global capitalism, especially given the enormous expansion of the world economy. An international approach is therefore an absolute necessity in the fight to change society. That is why there is no more important task today than building a new mass socialist International. This is the key task the CWI sets before itself. All those workers and youth that want to be part of this historic struggle should join with us today.

The Politics of anti-capitalism

This is an edited version of an article first published in SocialismToday No 56 May 2001, the monthly journal of the Socialist Party in England and Wales (CWI). The article examines the ideas of the most prominent of the anti-capitalist writesrs, philosophers and economists.   

“Imagine a wondrous new machine, strong and supple, a machine that reaps as it destroys. It is huge and mobile, something like the machines of modern agriculture but vastly more complicated and powerful. Think of this awesome machine running over open terrain and ignoring familiar boundaries. It plows across fields and fencerows with a fierce momentum that is exhilarating to behold and also frightening. As it goes, the machine throws off enormous mows of wealth and bounty while it leaves behind great furrows of wreckage.

“Now imagine that there are skilful hands on board, but no one is at the wheel. In fact, the machine has no wheel nor any internal governor to control the speed and direction. It is sustained by its own forward motion, guided mainly by its own appetites. And it is accelerating”. (One World Ready or Not, William Greider, Penguin Books, 1998)

This vivid metaphor of William Greider’s in 1997 described the seemingly unstoppable onward march of globalised capitalism. But surely it no longer fully applies after the massive worldwide anti-globalisation/anti-capitalist protests and gatherings, the latest of which was the tremendous demonstration in Quebec? These clearly show that the machine may not have completely stopped but enough spokes have been thrown into the wheels to raise the prospect of its derailment.

True, the representatives of the propertied classes of the Americas – with Cuba excluded – did sign an agreement to establish the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) incorporating North, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. But globalisation, which this agreement reflects, clearly faced a ‘crisis of legitimacy’, even before Quebec. It has been challenged in action by significant layers of young people, of workers and environmentalists.

The anti-capitalist protests worldwide are partly an instinctive and spontaneous reaction to the horrors of neo-liberalism but have been undoubtedly fuelled by the ideological challenge mounted by a number of writers, activists, philosophers and economists. The best known of these include Naomi Klein, Viviane Forrester, Pierre Bourdieu and Walden Bello. All have made searing criticisms of the effects of neo-liberal policies, both in the industrialised countries and in poorest areas of the world. This development is a vindication of the analysis made by the CWI at the beginning of the 1990s in answer to the vacuous idea of Francis Fukuyama that we had reached the ‘end of history’. We recognised that the belief in a socialist alternative to capitalism was badly damaged by the effects of the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) and the consequent liquidation of the planned economy as well as the heinous regimes of Stalinism. This allowed the ruling classes to conduct a ferocious ideological campaign to discredit socialism and to seek to reinforce the idea that there was ‘no alternative’ to capitalism.

This campaign was a vital ingredient allowing for the reinforcement and brutal application of neo-liberal policies. Not the least of its effects was the complete capitulation of the leaders of the former mass workers’ parties and the right-wing trade union leaders to the ideas of the ‘market’. It is itself an annihilating condemnation of those alleged ‘leaders’ that opposition to globalisation now comes not from them but mainly from figures who stand officially outside the ranks of the traditional workers’ organisations and are contemptuous of their role.

We pointed out that in the first instance opposition would be towards the effects of capitalist measures and neo-liberalism specifically. Later, a broader anti-capitalist movement would develop, out of which would come a socialist critique of the system. The present worldwide anti-globalisation/anti-capitalist movement underlines this analysis. At the moment, it is more of a ‘mood’ than a movement, with different strands, including the involvement of significant socialist forces.

Ecologists, environmentalists and others have been drawn behind the movement. The anti-capitalist protests have also attracted many young people without any clear philosophy, never mind a political alternative to capitalism.

This movement represents a considerable step forward. It is different from those that developed in the 1990s, which were characterised by the sprouting of single-issue protests highlighting the deleterious effects of capitalism, generally in one field. The current movement, in contrast, represents the first attempt at a generalised opposition to the system. It understands what it doesn’t like and what it opposes but it is either unclear or has no real alternative solutions to put in its place. However, events, and mighty events at that, particularly a looming world recession or slump, can propel this movement in a socialist direction.

Neo-liberalism diagnosed

Certainly a new generation has arisen which is searching for socialist ideas. Yet one of the major obstacles to them embracing a viable alternative are the very theoreticians who, initially, played a role in spurring on the anti-globalisation movement.

It is not possible to fault them on their diagnosis of the horrors of neo-liberal policies. The French writer, Viviane Forrester, for instance, had already in 1996, in her book L’horreur Economique (The Economic Horror), attacked the savage “culture of shame” attached to unemployment. Acting almost as a ‘voice of the voiceless’, the unemployed, she denounced a system which had “spawned an economic world as an obscenity and affront to human nature”.

Raging against the capitalists’ ‘economic realities’, she argued: “economic neo-liberalism increasingly offers the most vulnerable in our society a quite new choice: poverty at work or poverty on the dole”.

Interestingly, she called for the adoption of traditional class terminology which had been put into cold storage by the discrediting of socialist ideas following the collapse of Stalinism. She wrote: “How many terms fall out of use; ‘profits’ is one for sure, but also for example, ‘proletariat’, ‘capitalism’, ‘exploitation’, even those ‘classes’ impervious to all ‘struggle’!” She complains: “Are these terms prohibited or did they lose their meaning because a monstrous totalitarian enterprise used them and even promoted them?… Will everything be uprooted by Stalinism to the point where nothing other than the silence of the mediators, the arbiters, the interpreters and even the valid speakers is authorised? Will we allow them to determine those silences, those amputations of language that mutilate thought?”.

In a more philosophical vein, Pierre Bourdieu inveighed against what he called the ‘utopia of neo-liberalism’. In 1998 he denounced the parasitism, without calling it that, of modern capitalism, particularly of finance capital: “The globalisation of financial markets, when joined with the progress of information technology, ensures unprecedented mobility of capital. It gives investors concerned with the short-term profitability of their investment the possibility of permanently comparing the profitability of the largest corporations and, in consequence, penalising these firms’ relative setbacks. Subjected to this permanent threat, the corporations themselves have to adjust more and more rapidly to the exigencies of the market under penalty of ‘losing the market’s confidence’ as they say, as well as the support of their stockholders.”

We have been given and a recent example of capitalism’s tendency to ‘maximise profits’ in the laying-off of almost 2,000 people (in 2001) by the French firm Danone, whose profit rate of 7.9% ‘the market dictatorship’ decided was not sufficient.  

Bourdieu denounces these examples of ‘social Darwinism’, but in effect calls for a social democratic alternative, the intervention of the state and ‘society’ but within the context of capitalism.

Viviane Forrester earned the admonishment of the liberal French economist Alain Minc, chairman of Le Monde, who dismissed her book as ‘rubbish’. He told her: “Your book is a talented opinion poll. It is a publishing success because it plays on people’s fears. But it would have sold far fewer copies if it had been signed by Robert Hué” (the French ‘Communist’ Party leader). Yet Minc misses the obvious point that it would not have sold so many copies unless genuine ‘people’s fears’ existed, which are a consequence in France as elsewhere of the effects of neo-liberalism. Adept on pillorying neo-liberalism, at the same time however Viviane Forrester also unfortunately admitted on German television recently that she had no alternative to the present system.

Susan George and Walden Bello, as well as Naomi Klein, have also indicted capitalism and the institutions of capitalism without posing a viable alternative outside of capitalism. Susan George in particular has pointed to the changes in the governing ideas and policies of capitalism today in comparison to the situation after 1945. She correctly points out that the prevailing views then, even of the dominant wing of capitalism, leaned towards Keynesian ideas of managing the ebb and flows of capitalism through state intervention and spending, while the labour movement was for either social democratic or social Christian democratic ideas or some shade of ‘Marxism’.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was originally seen as a ‘progressive institution’ whose policy was to bail out economies through pumping in liquidity and “smoothing out temporary balance of payments problems”. She bemoans the fact that this has all changed utterly in the last 20 years. What she fails to see, however, is that the switch in policies was determined by the change in objective conditions of world capitalism, the ending of the ‘golden age’ of capitalism with the crisis of 1974/75, which laid the basis for neo-liberal policies.

The end of the 1960s and early 1970s saw the discrediting of Keynesian policies and a switch by ruling capitalist governments. Keynesianism had led to raging inflation and growing budget deficits. Pioneered ironically by the 1974-79 Labour government in Britain, a programme of savage cuts in government expenditure and strict control of the money supply became the order of the day. Susan George denounces very well the consequences of this in Britain: “In pre-Thatcher Britain [before 1979], about one person in ten was classed as living below the poverty line, not a brilliant result but honourable as nations go and a lot better than the pre-war period. Now one person in four and one child in three is officially poor”.

Her criticisms of the international trends within capitalism are devastating. Quoting a Chinese philosopher who said, ‘Above all, do not compete’, she writes: “The only actors in the neo-liberal world who seem to have taken his advice are the largest actors of all, the transnational corporations. The principle of competition scarcely applies to them; they prefer to practice what we will call Alliance Capitalism. It is no accident that, depending on the year, two-thirds to three-quarters of all the money labelled ‘Foreign Direct Investment’ is not devoted to new, job-creating investment but to mergers and acquisitions which almost invariably result in job losses”.

She demolishes the idea that globalisation is progressive: “The Corporate Consensus claims that their kind of globalisation is good for everyone.… These companies are not employment-friendly or environment-friendly and are interested only in shareholder value. So it is no surprise that the neo-liberal style globalisation is not good for everyone: since the early 1990s, in the United States, average corporate profits have increased by 108%, the Standard and Poor stock market has increased by 224% and the compensation packages of Corporation Chief Executives have increased by a whopping 481%. During the same period, average annual wages for workers have risen only 28%, just barely ahead of inflation… Studies by both UNCTAD and the United Nations University show that inequalities in most countries are inexorably rising, whether in China, Russia, Latin America or the West. Eighty-five per cent of the world’s population now lives in countries where inequalities are growing not diminishing”.

In her address to the Porto Alegre World Social Forum in January 2001, she seemed to go much further than before in condemning the “mega-corporations and the financial markets (which) are the ultimate incarnation of world capitalism. They are the real danger and their leaders are meeting in Davos as we speak”.

More importantly, she also declared: “Capital never willingly gives up anything to labour, the dominant classes never relinquish their privileges and power without a fight and are always avid to acquire more, the environment will not be protected merely because it would be rational to do so and it would be folly to believe that the democratic gains of earlier struggles have been won once and for all. While it’s true that we need to think long and hard about who our allies are now or could be in the future because the nature of social classes has obviously changed in the past 150 years, still the old notions of rapport de forces and class struggle have lost none of their relevance”.

Walden Bello has the advantage of being not just a commentator but an activist in the Philippines in the struggle to oust the Marcos dictatorship and somebody who articulates today the anger felt in the neo-colonial world. He predicted the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98, which he has described as the ‘Stalingrad of the IMF’, the implication being that this was the beginning of the end of the IMF.

What alternative to capitalism?

Susan George, Walden Bello and Naomi Klein – who wrote a searing denunciation of the outsourcing of the Western capitalist countries to the neo-colonial world where it superexploits local labour – have made valuable contributions in denouncing neo-liberal policies. However, Susan George was wrong to suggest in her Porto Alegre speech that neo-liberalism and its policies – the application of new technology, privatisations, depression of wages, part-time working, etc – is a “totally artificial construct”. These policies grew out of the largely unconscious economic developments in capitalism itself dating from the late 1970s. They began to be implemented in a big way in the early 1980s and particularly in the 1990s. A huge boost to the capitalists’ ability to implement these policies was furnished by the collapse of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and the ideological commitment to the ‘dictatorship of the market’ made by the ex-social democratic, ex-‘communist’ leaders of the mass workers’ organisations.

A more important deficiency of Susan George and others is the lack of a viable alternative provided by these writers and thinkers. On the one side, Susan George does express a kind of basic internationalist sentiment when she declared in the Porto Alegre speech: “Let’s make clear that we are ‘pro-globalisation’, we are in favour of sharing friendship, culture, cuisine, travel, solidarity, wealth and resources worldwide. We are above all ‘pro-democracy’ and ‘pro-planet’, which our adversaries most clearly are not”.

“Only a social revolution led by the working class and mobilising the poor peasantry behind it could give land to the dispossessed rural population in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

However, having come to power, as the Russian revolution demonstrated, a government of workers and poor would need to pass over to socialist tasks of taking over the assets of imperialism in the first instance and then of the rotten native capitalism.”

And yet despite this and the previously quoted denunciations of the capitalists – who will not give up concessions without a fight remember – her proposals for the movement which is developing do not go beyond the limits of the system itself. She is a member of ATTAC, for example, which originated in France and is the most prominent proponent of the Tobin Tax, which we would also support as we do with every attempt to increase corporate taxes, taxes on wealth and the rich.  In Porto Alegre, however, ATTAC if anything stood on the right of the conference. It was they who invited to the event the French ‘socialist’ ministers and past minister Chevenement, who were roundly booed by the participants. Susan George also declared to this gathering: “I’m sorry to admit it but I haven’t the slightest idea what ‘overthrowing capitalism’ means in the early 21st century. Maybe we will witness what the philosopher Paul Virilio has called the ‘global accident’ but it would surely be accompanied by enormous human suffering. If all the financial and stock markets suddenly collapsed, millions would be thrown out onto the pavement as large and small firms failed, bank closures would far outstrip the capacity of governments to prevent catastrophe, insecurity and crime would run rampant and we would find ourselves living in the Hobbesian hell of the war against all. Call me reformist if you like - I want to avoid such a future”.

In order to justify her non-socialist approach, she sets up straw men in order to denounce those ‘socialists and Marxists’ who allegedly oppose reforms. She writes: “If you start from the premise that it’s impossible to get what you really want, then you won’t even try. During the fight against the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, the trade unions in the OECD’s Trade Union Advisory Committee – the TUAC – argued that the MAI was going to pass anyway, so they would try at best to obtain a social clause. Aside from the fact that a social clause in the MAI would have been meaningless, this attitude reflected the demoralisation of the labour movement. We actually did defeat the MAI, unfortunately with no input at all from those unions, though some dissident unions were immensely important. Let’s always aim for the maximum. Sometimes ‘realism’ means demanding what may at first glance seem impossible”.

She also indicts “some left-wing MEPs (who) refused to vote for a feasibility study of the Tobin Tax on international currency transactions on the pretext that the Tobin Tax would merely amend capitalism whereas they meant to overthrow capitalism entirely. Their few negative votes caused the resolution to fail”. It was right-wing trade union leaders, not socialists or Marxists, who refused to fight, who Susan George correctly denounces. If left-wing MEPs voted against a reform, which the Tobin Tax clearly is, that is a mistake. Socialists and Marxists support the Tobin Tax, as limited as it is, as we would any wealth tax on the rich. But at the same time we would point out what this would involve on a capitalist basis.

ATTAC and Susan George have produced some tremendous figures to show the amount of wealth that would be generated, to alleviate poverty throughout the world, by a very small application in percentage terms of the Tobin Tax. However, who would implement such a tax? How is it possible to separate the introduction of such a measure in a world of uncontrolled capital flows, which national governments are unable to control, from the need for wider, socialist, measures? When the Labour government of 1964 introduced a mild corporation tax, the British ruling class went on a ‘strike of capital’. Because that government remained within the framework of capitalism, it was compelled to retreat and water down the tax until it became completely harmless. Without a state monopoly of foreign trade and the nationalisation of the banks, first of all on a national and then on an international scale, a Tobin Tax would be completely cancelled out. It would be similar to trying to pull out the claws of a wild tiger ‘peacefully’.

Walden Bello openly declares his support for social-democratic measures: “We are talking, moreover, about a strategy that consciously subordinates the logic of the market, the pursuit of cost efficiency, to the values of security, equity, and social solidarity. We are speaking, to use the language of the great social-democratic scholar Karl Polyani, about re-embedding the economy in society rather than having society driven by the economy”.

ATTAC and Walden Bello call for the reform or the ‘neutering’ of the IMF and the WTO. We on the other hand, call for their complete abolition. Even if this was to happen and capitalism was still left intact, however, it would find a way of carrying out the same policies in a different form. Bello, in a televised link-up, wittily told the bosses gathered at Davos that they could benefit the world by blasting off into outer space. Even if they obliged, however, capitalism would still find from within its ranks sufficient replacements for them. It is not individual capitalists but their system of production and organising society that is the problem.

Walden Bello, while being a trenchant critic of globalisation, nevertheless restricts himself programmatically to seek to change the system from within. This is to be achieved by the “deconcentration and decentralisation of institutional power and the creation of a pluralistic system of institutions and organisations interacting with one another, guided by broad and flexible agreements and understandings.” He harks back to the period of 1950-70, which was preferable, according to him, to the ugly reality of globalised capital today. He lauds the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) “that was limited in its power, flexible, and more sympathetic to the special status of developing countries”. At that stage however, 1950-75, capitalism was experiencing the greatest economic upswing in its history. GATT was primarily concerned with capitalism’s attempt to overcome the limits of the nation state, which it partially did. This was an important factor in fuelling this boom.

At the same time, through the unequal terms of trade, the ‘developing’ countries were discriminated against. Only relatively does that period appear preferable to the agonies which the masses in the neo-colonial world suffer today. This period, moreover, was not at all tranquil, either in the neo-colonial world or in the advanced industrial countries. It was an era of unprecedented national and social revolt in Africa, Asia and Latin America. At the same time, during this boom and because of the contradictions it had set up, even in the ‘advanced’ industrialised countries, we saw massive social upheavals including the greatest general strike in history in France in 1968.

Bello proposes a combination of measures against the capitalist institutions, either to: “a) decommission them; b) neuter them (eg convert the IMF into a pure research institution, monitoring exchange rates of global capital flows); or c) radically reduce their powers and turn them into just another set of actors co-existing with being checked by other international institutions, and agreements and regional groupings”. This would mean strengthening capitalist institutions on a regional level such as “UNCTAD, multilateral environment agreements, the International Labour Organisation, the evolving economic blocs such as Mercosur in Latin America, SARC in South Asia, SADCC in Southern Africa, and a revitalised ASEAN in South-East Asia.”

In other words, Bello wants to substitute the world institutions of capitalism for local or regional capitalist blocs. The problem, however, confronting the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America is not just imperialism but the native landlord and capitalist regimes and their attempts to band together in blocs such as Mercosur. They are incapable of solving the economic and social problems in their own countries or region and since 1989-90, more than any other previous period, have crawled on their belly before the economic might of globalised capitalism.

In his proposals for ‘de-globalisation’ Bello does not go beyond attempts to reform the market and eliminate its most distasteful features. This involves a utopian turning away from “production for export to production for the local market”. He also suggests that the neo-colonial world refuses to become “dependent on foreign investment and foreign financial markets”, and proposes “income redistribution and land redistribution”. This last demand could not be satisfied within the confines of the prevailing landlord and capitalist regimes in the neo-colonial world. Only a social revolution led by the working class and mobilising the poor peasantry behind it could give land to the dispossessed rural population in Asia, Africa and Latin America. However, having come to power, as the Russian revolution demonstrated, a government of workers and poor would need to pass over to socialist tasks of taking over the assets of imperialism in the first instance and then of the rotten native capitalism.

Instead of an anti-global capitalism programme, Bello proposes “de-emphasising growth and maximising equity in order to radically reduce environmental disequilibrium”. This attempt to turn back the wheel of history Bello shares with many in the movement, particularly its environmental and ecological wing. However, the very facts and figures which are given by Susan George, Bello himself and others, shows that the problem is not excess wealth but the lack of it for the majority, massive and growing disparity between rich and poor, poverty and outright starvation, particularly in the neo-colonial world. A programme to prevent growth is not the solution. A colossal development of the productive forces is not just possible but necessary, as the precondition for dragging the majority of human kind out of the mud into which capitalism has forced it. It is possible to have economic growth and sustainable and environmentally friendly measures. But this involves humankind sharing the resources of this planet, which is only possible by an organised plan of production on a national, continental and world scale.

The anti-capitalists and Marxism

This poses the question of world socialism. The global struggle for this is the real answer to globalised, rapacious capitalism. This the leading thinkers of the movement refuse to accept. Some like Naomi Klein recognise the historical contribution of Marxism: “I certainly am not rejecting Marx. All this activism is so informed by Marx”. At the same time her philosophy is an eclectic brew of a “little bit of Marxism, a little bit of socialism, from environmentalism, from anarchism and a lot of inspiration”. She correctly attacks dogmatic ‘Marxism’, which sees in every movement a mere repetition of the past: “You know what, there are other ideas out there too – older ideas and brand new ideas. Maybe we can create something that is new and better than anything we’ve had before and deals with some of the failings of the past - that sees us as whole human beings”. Genuine Marxism is not a set of rigid formulas, dogmatically recited in every situation. A vital aspect is to learn from the struggles of young people and workers but at the same time also seeking to generalise this in a programmatic form.

We share some of the approaches of Naomi Klein. In her book, No Logo, she has imaginatively connected with the new generation who are beginning to oppose the power of the corporations, including some who are increasingly anti-capitalist and searching for socialist solutions. But she is wrong when she says: “The biggest weakness of the socialist and Marxist left has been to treat people only as workers, in the same way as capitalism treats us only as consumers. That isn’t the way we see ourselves. We see ourselves as something more whole than that. We want more integration. We want a movement that has more room for our whole selves, for our creative selves, for joint spirituality and all the rest of it”.

The ‘Marxism’ which Naomi Klein attacks is a caricature of the genuine ideas of Marxism. The working class is the main force in society which can bring about the change which the anti-global capitalism movement is searching for. They are the majority in society and are not just producers but also make up the bulk of the ‘consumers’. In her mistaken remarks, however, is to be found the sentiments of a generation that is repelled by Stalinism and its historical legacy. Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union had planned economies which, on the one side, showed its advantages in developing society and to some extent the living standards of the peoples. But Stalinism also saddled society with a one-party totalitarian regime which had nothing in common with socialism. We seek to build a society where the means of production, the giant corporations which control the lives of the majority on this planet, are owned and democratically controlled by the majority.

This is inconceivable without, at the same time, the widest democracy being implemented. The ‘representatives’ of the people and officials would be strictly accountable, subject to recall and live on an income no more than that of the average worker. Naomi Klein is now of the opinion that the days of “pure representative democracy are drawing to a close”. She correctly argues that the established Western political parties are “in hock to transnational corporations”. There was, however, no ‘golden’ period under capitalism, of “pure representative democracy”. Capitalist democracy, in the words of Leon Trotsky, is where you can say what you like as long as ultimately the capitalists decide. She is unfortunately wrong when she concludes that “direct action is all that is left between Exxon and the Alaskan wildlife reserves”. The highest form of ‘direct action’ – as opposed to ‘directionless action’ – is the mass mobilisation of the working class in struggle, the strike, mass demonstrations, the general strike and the taking of power out of the hands of the tiny band of billionaires and placing it in the hands of working class people.

An inchoate, spontaneous movement is inevitable in the first development of the movement, given what has gone before. However, unless it then goes on to acquire more organisational forms, democratic structures, opens itself up to all that are prepared to participate and fight on an agreed minimum programme with the right to put forward different points of view within, this tremendous movement could end in a cul-de-sac.

The members and supporters of the CWI, right from the first movements in London and Seattle, have participated in all the major demonstrations and seek to strengthen the anti-globalisation, anti-corporate, pro-environment and ecology movement. At the same time, we believe that the time is ripe to move beyond the mood of ‘anti-the system’ to a specifically socialist approach. Quebec will be followed this year by big anti-capitalist demonstrations in Gothenburg in June, in Genoa in July and in Brussels in December . This period must be utilised not just for organising the demonstrations and confronting the representatives of globalised capitalism. It should open up a period of intense discussion and debate amongst all who are part of the movement. The aim of this should be programmatic clarity as a means of reaching out in particular to the working class who will be compelled to move into action under the blows of the coming recession or slump. The ideas of the leading writers and thinkers of this movement do not, as yet, constitute a convincing alternative which challenges capitalism and lays the basis for a new world, a socialist one.